1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a semiconductor device and a method of manufacturing the semiconductor device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A hermetic seal and a resin or plastic seal have been known as seals for protecting a semiconductor device from dust, contamination and a mechanical breakdown. With improvements in passivation technology of a semiconductor chip and improvements in the characteristic of a sealing resin, there has recently been a tendency to widely use a resin seal package. This type of resin seal package is low in cost and suitable for mass production.
However, when the entire length of each of bonding wires 9 for providing electrical connections between electrode pads of a semiconductor chip 3 and a lead frame 5 reaches 3 mm or more, wire flows or drifts were apt to occur in a conventional resin or plastic molded type semiconductor device 13. In FIGS. 4 and 5, the direction of flow of a mold resin 11 in a mold process is indicated by the arrows in the drawings. Although described in detail later, each wire is deformed in the direction in which the mold resin 11 flows. This wire deformation is called "wire flow or drift".